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Is expensive: lobster
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"House lobster shells are seen as a sign of poverty and humiliation." Author John J. Rowan wrote this in 1876. Because of the overpopulation of crustaceans along the New England coasts, lobster was long frowned upon in the US. No wealthy person would condescend to eat the "cockroach of the seas", especially if he could fall back on his own land animals. The abundant source of protein, on the other hand, was reserved for the poor, servants, prisoners and slaves. For a long time, American lobster was so cheap that it was sold like canned tuna and people even fed the lobster to their cats.
How did it go from cat food to decadent gourmet food?
With the introduction of American railways in the mid-18th century.
Lobster was served on trains across the country precisely because it was cheap but presented to passengers as a rare exotic dish.
The domestic travelers did not know lobster and got a taste for it in the travel situation.
They just didn't know it was "poor people's food".
It became such a popular product that demand made the price rise and supply scarce.
The sea cockroaches became a luxury item and an elite mark of distinction.
Finally, the rich could afford poverty too.
New appreciation
I am only adding this historical digression on the lobster to point out the possibility of a shift in thinking in consumer psychology. The way we generally consume a product often changes our appreciation for that product. Something that we perceive as valuable or that is socially classified as valuable and noble seems to taste better to us. Our taste is often not only what we like, but also one that is socially cultivated and one that is determined by economic circumstances. And so what we
can
eat, what we
want to
eat
and what we
should
eat is of
course also a political question.
That leads me to Cem Özdemir's push to raise the price of meat in order to cultivate a new appreciation, to improve animal welfare and to support farmers.
The reduction in meat consumption, which would most likely follow, also relieves the burden on the environment - which would be welcome.
So how could this suggestion be mistaken for an unjust one?
more on the subject
Inflation and the fight against cheap meat: How rising food prices can be socially cushionedBy Florian Diekmann
The question is, which levers are to be turned in order to have a positive influence on social contexts at best - and who may be more affected by this than others.
Is it permissible to declare food, which seems to be an important and necessary part of the supply of a society, to be a luxury product in order to protect the environment, if that means that a certain part of society is excluded by the actually correct endeavors to protect the environment?
Obviously, certain ideas of social justice and necessary environmental protection measures are in a supposed contradiction here.
Improvement of animal welfare
"Supposedly" because both are of course interlinked with one another, but especially the price increase as an instrument must lead to this impression. Because soberly broken down is a demand through which society is to be nudged to better consumer behavior, but which de facto systematically restricts low-income people most and at the same time only consolidates the habitual privileges of those who are better off - meat as a status symbol that one indulges in from time to time and just can do it first - as an involuntary approach, classically.
A low-income group is disadvantaged precisely because it is low-income - although it is not communicated at the same time that it should also be given access to better food. It is dear to be poor. At the same time - we certainly agree - an improvement in animal welfare and the payment of farmers must of course be implemented. So does one justify the other? Does an unfairly designed pricing policy, which only a few can afford, correct a globally indebted, unfair and ecologically harmful economy of factory farming?
That seems to me to be the lobster question: is meatlessness a classicist requirement because, for understandable reasons that cannot be changed by poor people, a wholesome, plant-based diet is easier for the rich to implement than for the poor?
Because: being able to freely choose to do without is the real luxury that not everyone can afford.
Ecological goals
The consciously granted or consciously and voluntarily avoided meat is only one manifestation of this imbalance.
How can it be fair that environmental protection that should benefit everyone could be associated with more unfairness for some?
How much environmental awareness does the government fit into a basic security?
The discrepancy is particularly evident in the case of meat, since meat consumption in particular is also political due to its economic interrelationships and ecological effects - and the conscious renunciation accordingly as well.
more on the subject
Ayurveda: How Proper Nutrition Can Bring the Body into BalanceA podcast by Jelena Berner
In the purely plant-based diet, in addition to the aspects of individual health, one's own taste, and social performance, there are also two ethical factors - whether wanted or not: animal welfare and environmental protection. With efforts to eat less or no meat at all, these two aspects are sensibly negotiated.
Labeling meat - like the lobster back then - from a mass product of the basic supply to a luxury in order to regulate consumption assumes, conversely, that low-income people who buy cheap meat do not care about animal welfare or environmental protection. So they are not only too lazy or uneducated to cook healthily and to be frugal (this is not the case with social advancement!), They are also amoral acceptors of animal suffering who don't care about the earth - and they are also lacking in solidarity with farmers.
This phalanx of the three correct reasons for a plant-based diet - health, animal welfare, the environment - makes those who for economic reasons cannot afford it look like selfish villains;
and that makes the idea of raising the price of meat in the name of the common good an exclusionary one.
It is an idea that catches on especially well in a performance-oriented society that would also prefer to believe that the poverty of the poor is anyway a product and a crime of their individual weaknesses in character.
more on the subject
Özdemir push against junk prices for groceries: "Communicative next to it" By Sophie Garbe, Valerie Höhne, Ralf Neukirch and Cornelia Schmergal
But! Özdemir's intentions are of course necessary and valid. It goes without saying that farmers must be supported, animals must be protected and, at best, completely spared, and meat consumption must be drastically reduced in global contexts. The ecological reality is that we cannot protect our environment if we continue to eat meat regularly. The American writer Jonathan Safran Foer writes: "If cows were a country, they would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world."
The climate crisis is the slow-motion implosion of a world that sells all resources that nature makes available to us - including and especially meat. And so we are confronted with the following situation: if we eat meat, we harm the environment. Simply making meat more expensive puts poor people at a disadvantage. Leaving meat cheap promotes the exploitation of those involved in production and of natural resources. As a result, social benefits should be increased, people lifted out of poverty and alternatives to meat should be made equally accessible to everyone. At the same time, nature would have to be protected through a systemic change in the relations of production. Not the individual Hartz4 recipient or the family at subsistence level should be forced to save the climate,the problem is of a structural nature - and therefore it has to be solved structurally, not first with the end user.
So we need an economic change in consumption and production relationships in order to achieve the urgent ecological goals, and at the same time we have to create social justice that enables everyone to have access to a healthy diet, in Germany but also within a global framework.
Ecological questions are social questions are economic questions.
Today more than ever we need a rethink in society as a whole, a fair agreement on what is really worth eating - and what is only lobster.